


The Place Where We Fall

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Eclipse" future fic. <i>He's outgrown the scale of 'normal' so long ago that one step further away from what's right and natural seems to be no big deal.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Place Where We Fall

_"You are Jacob, and he is Edward, and I am Bella. And nothing else matters."_  
(Bella, "Eclipse", Chapter 5)

* * *

_Every once in a while, you wake up confused, alone in a too large bed, momentarily unsure of your location. It only takes you seconds to remember where you are and the events that lead you here, once the all too familiar, sickeningly sweet scent hits your nose. But the sense of bewilderment won't vanish as quickly, and you can't help wondering how the hell this – any of this – happened._

* * *

He comes to Detroit with no expectation and no hopes, other than to get away from everything that's familiar. (A notion that, in hindsight, will seem ridiculously ironic, and is going to make him wonder whether he hasn't been lying to himself all along, if he wasn't subconsciously following a trail.)

Five years, and he still can't shake off the memories of Bella and the way his thoughts turn to what might have been if she hadn't chosen the bloodsucker over him: treacherous unwelcome fantasies of a happy future sneaking up on him when he least expects them, the suffocating force of the 'what if' still bearing down on him heavy and crushing even after all this time.

He arrives on a Friday night in November, intending to stay just long enough to get some rest and fill up his bike before he can move on in the morning. He never stays anywhere for long, these days.

The air smells of rain and exhaust, but there's another scent underneath, faint but familiar. An ugly scent that stings his nose and makes his blood roar. There are vampires nearby.

Part of him wants nothing more than to stay put and wait for them, to phase and fight them, but he doesn't know how many of the bloodsuckers are hanging around and how strong they are, and the area is too crowded with people anyway. Getting into a struggle here and now would be stupid and he knows it, no matter how much he's itching for a fight. It's been too long since the last time he's hunted.

Reason wins over instinct – for now, at least, and he vows not to go looking for the leeches. It turns out he doesn't need to. They find him. 

Or rather: she does.

When the smell gets stronger, he's almost glad that he cannot escape a conflict after all. He thinks he's prepared – but nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Bella, all pale skin and dark hair, more beautiful than he's ever seen her, almost luminous in the artificial neon light of the street lamps.

His heart clenches and misses a beat and it breaks a little, seeing her like this: the personification of everything his very nature repels and yet all he ever wanted.

"Bella," he whispers, as they stand staring at each other. 

She, too, seems to be rooted to the spot by the sight of him. Then, suddenly, she comes flying at him and he barely has time to think that, should she choose to attack him he'd have no way of protecting himself in time, before he finds himself with an armful of laughing vampire, her arms wound tightly around his neck and her eyes – golden, not chocolate brown anymore –gleaming with joy.

"Jake!" she says, and tightens the hug a little, just short of it becoming painful. She's so much stronger than she used to be, but in a way, holding her feels just the same, the only real difference is the smell that's clouding his senses.

Wrinkling his nose, he disentangles from her with some difficulty.

"God, you _stink_ , Bells."

He expects her to roll her eyes and says, 'So do you,' but that's not what happens. Instead, the smile suddenly slips from her face, replaced by sadness and a touch of wariness. "Enough to make it unbearable to be around me?" she asks, unhappily.

It's as if she only remembers now who— _what_ she is, that things are different now. _Should_ be different, in any case – except, they aren't. She's still Bella and he's still Jacob, and his feelings for her are still the same they always have been, no matter whether there's blood flowing in her veins of not. 

It's probably a little pathetic for him to think like that; but when he shakes his head and tells her that no bad smell could ever keep him away from her and the smile returns to her face, he really can't bring himself to care.

* * *

"What have you been up to?" she wants to know, and he tells her everything.

Well, not quite everything. He doesn't talk about the vampires he hunted and killed, or the pale, dark-haired girls he's been with. But everything else, he does share: roaming the Canadian forests as a wolf, back-packing through Europe, the flurry of nights in Amsterdam when he drank himself into oblivion, the months he spent with a werewolf pack in the Auvergne.

Bella listens, her head resting on her hands and a smile on her face. His eyes follow her every movement, hungrily drinking the sight of her in. He didn't think he'd ever have this chance again, and he still cannot quite believe it.

He wants to turn the question back on her and ask how she's spent the last five years, but the answers seem obvious and he doesn't want to hear her talk of marrying Cullen and being turned into a bloodsucker and spending agonizing months and years clinging to her sanity and trying to fight the blood lust.

Bella seems relaxed, happy. Jacob doesn't know where Cullen is and he doesn't ask, but he doubts his absence from the household is a permanent thing. He enjoys the time with Bella while he can, knowing that their hours of togetherness are numbered.

* * *

He races down the stairs, the urge to get away as far and as fast as he can intensifying with every second, the closer he senses Cullen get.

He suddenly hears Bella's voice – and when he realizes that it's _in his head_ , it startles him so much that it almost makes him stumble, his werewolf-reflexes kicking in just in time before he can embarrass himself by falling down the stairs and breaking his legs.

 _Don't go_ , she pleads, but he's more concerned with the fact that he can hear her than with her words.

 _You've been holding out on me_ , he thinks, his urgent retreat on hold for the time being.

There's no reply.

"She can't hear you," someone says behind him. When Jacob spins around, Cullen stands leaning against the wall with his arms crossed in front of him, regarding him unhappily, his discomfort oozing from every fibre of his being, body poised for a fight. The feeling is mutual, but Jacob's curiosity outweighs his antipathy.

"But I just heard—"

"She can make you hear what she's thinking, if she concentrates, but she can't actually read your thoughts," Cullen explains, and Jacob's fists clench at his side as his frustration rises. It figures that Bella and her bloodsucker wind up with _complimentary_ abilities, as if to rub the ridiculous idea that they are somehow meant for each other in. It makes him want to hurl.

 _Don't go_ , Bella repeats, in his mind, a new kind of desperation in her voice. 

It breaks his heart, but as much as he wants to, he cannot comply. Not now, when he's too close to losing control.

"Tell her I'll be back," he grinds out.

He doesn't stick around for long enough to wait for the bloodsucker's reaction.

* * *

"Does he need to be here?"

Jacob sourly forces the question out through clenched teeth. 

Cullen makes a move to stand up. "I can –"

He seems ready enough to leave them alone for a wile, but Bella interrupts him. Her voice is firm, if sad. "No."

"I'm sorry," she says, turning to Jacob – and she does sound sorry, even though her tone is unrelenting. "We're sort of a package deal."

It's just a poorly worded phrase, and he knows from the shattered look on her face that she doesn't mean it like _that_. She's apologizing for choosing the leech over him – _again_ – not suggesting... But his mind runs its own course and he can't stop the onslaught of the mental images her words evoke. He's never been more glad that she doesn't have the ability to read his mind, because he can't imagine her not being appalled by the idea of… being shared. 

His thoughts are vivid, a flurry of images blending into one another: her body between them, his dark hands on her white skin, contrasting where Cullen's pallor melts with hers, his touch heating her until she's so warm that Cullen's icy touch makes her gasp. The best of both words, literally. He wants to be disgusted by the unbidden thoughts – or at the very least, he wants to be able to pretend to be disgusted, but he doesn't have that amount of self-control.

In front of him, Bella frowns a little, probably bemused by his silence stretching longer and longer. He can't bring himself to look at the other occupant of the room, knowing his mind is an open book for the bloodsucker.

Somewhere in the house, a phone rings, making him jump a little. 

Cullen must have left to answer it because when Jacob looks up, the room is empty save for him and Bella, and he can hear Cullen's subdued voice in the hallway.

Bella looks worried. "What's wrong? Your heart is racing a million miles an hour!"

He shakes his head, not so much in reply to her question as in an attempt to clear his mind and banish the images. 

"I'd better go." It comes out harsher than he wanted it to. Bella looks a little hurt, but he knows he can't pay attention to that now. He needs to get out of here before Cullen comes back and tears him to pieces.

It's too late, though. He feels the bloodsucker at his back even before Bella looks over his shoulder and shoots Cullen a curious look. 

Jacob imagines that there's some mental exchange going on before Cullen speaks. 

"Alice. She wanted to know why our future just disappeared."

If anything, he sounds amused, and for a second Jacob is so astonished by the lack of anger that it takes a while for the words to sink in. His head snaps around to finally look at Cullen, surprised at the calmness with which he holds his gaze.

* * *

Bella doesn't speak to either of them for almost a day, furious at them for making plans about her without asking her first. Cullen gracefully gets out of her way, but Jacob tries to reason with her.

"It was just a stupid stray thought, Bells," he defends himself.

Bella glares at him. "Alice doesn't see stray thoughts and silly fantasies, Jake. Not unless you plan on making them happen."

He can't argue with that. Doesn't mean that he doesn't try. "It can't have been me alone! I don't have the power to make that kind of decision."

"Which is why I'm mad at both of you."

It's a good thing Bella, as a vampire, is as quick to forgive as Bella the human used to be.

* * *

Werewolves might not be receptive to the trademark smell of vampires that's so pleasant for humans, but whatever part of the leeches' genetic built-up repels them, it stops short of their looks: not even a werewolf can looks at a vampire and not see their beauty.

Watching them together is hard. 

Part of him wants to rip the bloodsucker to shreds for daring to touch Bella. Part of him can't take his eyes away from them because they're so _beautiful_ together. The wolf in him howls and demands to run free, and it takes every shred of his self-control to get the mess that's his _ragejealousydesire_ in check.

He can hear the bloodsucker laughing softly and he figures the best revenge he can get – apart from maybe tearing Cullen's throat out – is giving him a taste of his own medicine. He's with them in two steps, the smooth, cool skin of Bella's back brushing against his chest. A gasp escapes her lips, and the shiver that runs through his body has nothing to do with the coldness of her skin.

Cullen isn't laughing anymore.

* * *

He loves Bella enough to know that, after everything, Cullen wouldn't be a deal breaker for him, but he thought the leech would be a necessary evil he had to endure. What he never counted on were Bella's powers and her stubbornness: you could only see someone through the eyes of a person who loved them so many times without starting to feel the attraction yourself.

At first, when a flood of borrowed sensations and emotions swept over him whenever Bella would kiss her bloodsucker, he thought that she merely lost control over her mental barriers when she was distracted or excited, and he gritted his teeth and bore it, suppressing the growl.

It get worse over time, though, more frequently, until waves of affection and desire that aren't his own seem to hit him at random, and he realizes that she's _deliberately_ projecting her thoughts and feelings for Edward. 

She doesn't always do it, which makes it impossible for Jacob to be prepared when it hits him. It gets harder and harder to draw the line between what he feels and what Bella makes him feel. He would ask her to stop – but every time he decides that he can't take it any more, he can't bring himself to say the words. He has never known a more powerful, more arousing, more burning sensation than knowing what it's like to be Bella Swan wanting Edward Cullen... it's like a drug, and he's begun craving his fix. As much as he hates it, he needs it more.

And then, one day, it's _too much_. Bella's desire for Edward echoes in his mind and he can't _not_ act on it anymore. 

He hears the growl that's ripped from his throat as if it's coming from someone else. Next he knows, his lips are on Edward's, and even though that mouth under his is hard and cold as marble, it opens and invites him in and he cannot get enough.

 _I don't even like you_ , he thinks, annoyed, even as his hand tangles in Edward's hair and he pushes harder against the stony body beneath his. That thought is definitely his own, not Bella's, and he trusts Edward to hear it.

Edward's hand forces his head back with a little more violence than necessary, perhaps his way of telling Jacob that the feeling is mutual. But his lips trailing along Jacob's carotid are gentle, almost tender, and when a cold hand reaches between their bodies, Jacob comes embarrassingly fast.

Bella gapes at them. "That was... sudden," she says, faintly.

"Stop acting like this isn't your fault!" he growls, anger and humiliation burning in his veins.

"I didn't even do anything. Just now, I mean." At his incredulous look, she adds, "I _swear_ , Jake, I wasn't in your head today. I'd all but given up on you!"

He wishes the ground would open up under him and swallow him whole, because the idea that it was _all him_ who decided to jump Edward, without any meddling from Bella, is... inconceivable, impossible, mortification making his blood rise to a furious blush spreading over his chest and his face. 

Bella's look turns hungry. "You have to do embarrassing stuff more often, if it makes you blush like this," she mutters, her cool fingertip tracing a path from his cheek down to his navel.

"Hmm. He blushes rather fetchingly, doesn't he?" Edward agrees. 

Jacob doesn't need to see the smile on the vampire's lips to know that he's deliberately teasing him, and his humiliation ratchets up a few notches yet. 

The glare he sends in Edward's direction is a murderous one, but all the bloodsucker does is laugh. Then he leans over, one hand finding Bella's and entwining their fingers, and kisses Jacob again, open-mouthed and unapologetic, as if it wasn't new or anything to worry or be embarrassed about. And somehow, that makes it all okay.

* * *

Bella in the sunlight takes his breath away.

Superfluous, really. _Bella_ takes his breath away – the sunlight is just a bonus.

* * *

No matter how many times Jacob touches Bella, it always surprises him how cold she is. It's stupid: he knows that vampires are cold; the icy touch of Edward's skin never shocked him. But Bella... it's like some subconscious part of him can't quite accept that she's one of _them_ now, as if he still expects her to be the same girl she was when they first met, still frail and vulnerable and human, still in need of someone to warm her up when it gets too cool outside.

But he knows that she isn't and she doesn't, even if his body hasn't quite grasped that yet and still instinctively wraps himself around her to shield her and feels little shocks when her freezing hands trail patterns on his torso, like treating frost bites with fire. 

Making love to her is an exquisite, confusing mixture of sensations startling him anew every single time, and he hopes he'll never get used to it.

* * *

More than anything, it's the sunny days he revels in. Bella thinks that it's just to spite them and their nature, and he doesn't disabuse her of that notion even though she couldn't be more wrong. It would be too embarrassing to explain the truth: that he loves the sun for forcing them to stay inside, so he can have them all to himself.

Of course, Edward knows; it's probably written all over his thoughts and Edward never does him the favour to stay out of his mind when he should, but for once the vampire seems content not to share this particular truth with Bella and let it be their secret.

When the weather forecast makes him smile and Bella chides him for being childish and clinging to out-dated, irrelevant prejudices, Edward's lips give a little twitch.

* * *

Jacob doesn't quite know how the concept of sharing _Bella_ turned, more often than not, into the fact that he feels like it's _him_ they're sharing, understands even less that he doesn't really mind. Bella was right – much more right than she probably could have imagined, back then: they are a package deal, and the boundaries between them have blurred into obscurity.

It's unnatural, in every possible way, but he's outgrown the scale of 'normal' so long ago that one step further away from what's right and natural seems to be no big deal.

Sharp, deadly teeth graze over his neck, and he can only begin to grasp the amount of self-restraint it costs them not to break his skin. 

His pulse speeds up, and Bella's head comes to rest on his chest, listening to his heartbeat with an enraptured smile on her face, making him want nothing more than to draw her up towards him and taste those perfect red lips as he sinks into her cold embrace. He would, too, but Edward is distracting him, fingertips ghosting over the inside of his thighs like ice cubes, no more than a teasing touch that drives him insane. 

His mind must be screaming at Edward to _do something_ , because Edward laughs. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that patience is a virtue?"

Just as he is about to reply that he doesn't feel particularly virtuous, a cold mouth engulfs his hardness and he feels like coming apart at the seams. His breath hitches, his blood circulation goes into overdrive, and he feels the sheets tearing in his hands. A pair of lips brushes lightly over his exposed throat, and there's the icy wetness of a tongue lapping at his pulse point.

The dual stimulation is too much: he feels cold and hot all over, overheating and freezing at the same time, and his orgasm is torn from his with a force that's almost painful.

"Fuck," he mutters roughly when he finds his voice again, letting out a shaky breath of air he didn't remember consciously holding. 

It's pretty damn inconvenient, he thinks wryly, to be the only person in this relationship who actually needs to breathe. Especially when the others seem to do their best to take his breath away.

* * *

_"You think too much," Edward tells you, and you glare at him._

 _"You would know," you say pointedly and add a mental,_ If you stayed out of my head, my thinking too much wouldn't bother you. _But there's no real anger in either your voice or your thoughts; you've long since gotten used to having him in your head._

_"What is he thinking about?" Bella asks Edward, and the hint of a smile on her lips tells you that she knows exactly how much it annoys you that she's acting like you weren't even in the room._

_"This. Us. How he ended up in a relationship with two vampires."_

_Edward's voice is casual and unconcerned, but the teasing smile slips from Bella's face. Your fingertips tingle as you feel the urge to reach out and smooth the frown that settles onto her forehead away._

_And then her voice is in his head, worried and uncertain and small._

__Regrets? _she wants to know._

_You think of the life you could have had with Bella as a human, of her overwhelming numbness after Edward had left her, of the years you spent thinking you'd lost her forever – so many ways this story could have ended. You shake your head._

_"None."_

_No one is more surprised than you at how much you mean it._

End.


End file.
